Differential contribution of Bud6p and Kar9p to microtubule capture and spindle orientation in S. cerevisiae

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, spindle orientation is controlled by a temporal and spatial program of microtubule (MT)–cortex interactions. This program requires Bud6p/Aip3p to direct the old pole to the bud and confine the new pole to the mother cell. Bud6p function has been linked to Kar9p, a protein guiding MTs along actin cables. Here, we show that Kar9p does not mediate Bud6p functions in spindle orientation. Based on live microscopy analysis, kar9Δ cells maintained Bud6p-dependent MT capture. Conversely, bud6Δ cells supported Kar9p-associated MT delivery to the bud. Moreover, additive phenotypes in bud6Δ kar9Δ or bud6Δ dyn1Δ mutants underscored the separate contributions of Bud6p, Kar9p, and dynein to spindle positioning. Finally, tub2C354S, a mutation decreasing MT dynamics, suppressed a kar9Δ mutation in a BUD6-dependent manner. Thus, Kar9p-independent capture at Bud6p sites can effect spindle orientation provided MT turnover is reduced. Together, these results demonstrate Bud6p function in MT capture at the cell cortex, independent of Kar9p-mediated MT delivery along actin cables

Chemical fingerprints of emotional body odor

Chemical communication is common among animals. In humans, the chemical basis of social communication has remained a black box, despite psychological and neural research showing distinctive physiological, behavioral, and neural consequences of body odors emitted during emotional states like fear and happiness. We used a multidisciplinary approach to examine whether molecular cues could be associated with an emotional state in the emitter. Our research revealed that the volatile molecules transmitting different emotions to perceivers also have objectively different chemical properties. Chemical analysis of underarm sweat collected from the same donors in fearful, happy, and emotionally neutral states was conducted using untargeted two-dimensional (GC×GC) coupled with time of flight (ToF) MS-based profiling. Based on the multivariate statistical analyses, we find that the pattern of chemical volatiles (N = 1655 peaks) associated with fearful state is clearly different from that associated with (pleasant) neutral state. Happy sweat is also significantly different from the other states, chemically, but shows a bipolar pattern of overlap with fearful as well as neutral state. Candidate chemical classes associated with emotional and neutral sweat have been identified, specifically, linear aldehydes, ketones, esters, and cyclic molecules (5 rings). This research constitutes a first step toward identifying the chemical fingerprints of emotion.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Human chemosignals modulate emotional perception of biological motion in a sex-specific manner

Androsta-4,16,-dien-3-one and estra-1,3,5(10),16-tetraen-3-ol have previously been shown to communicate opposite sex information that is differently effective to the two sex groups. The current study critically examines if the two human steroids could facilitate interactions with potential mates rather than competitors by acting on the recipients’ emotional perception in a sex-appropriate manner. Using dynamic point-light displays that portray the gaits of walkers whose emotional states are digitally morphed along the valence and the arousal axes, we show that smelling androstadienone subconsciously biases heterosexual women, but not men, towards perceiving the male, but not female, walkers as happier and more relaxed. By contrast, smelling estratetraenol subconsciously biases heterosexual men, but not women, towards perceiving the female, but not male, walkers as happier and more relaxed. These findings indicate that androstadienone and estratetraenol prime the identification of emotionally receptive states for the potential mates with whom they are associated, in manners contingent upon not only the recipients’ own sex but also their sex perception of other individuals that ensure sex-appropriate behavior

Corrigendum : Fear odor facilitates the detection of fear expressions over other negative expressions [Chem. Senses (2018)] DOI: 10.1093/chemse/bjy029

This is a correction notice for article bjy029 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/chemse/bjy029), published on 22 May 2018. Due to an error, the incorrect images were used for figures 2 and 3. These figures have now been corrected in the published article

Fear odor facilitates the detection of fear expressions over other negative expressions

In a double-blind experiment, participants were exposed to facial images of anger, disgust, fear, and neutral expressions under 2 body odor conditions: fear and neutral sweat. They had to indicate the valence of the gradually emerging facial image. Two alternative hypotheses were tested, namely a "general negative evaluative state" hypothesis and a "discrete emotion" hypothesis. These hypotheses suggest 2 distinctive data patterns for muscle activation and classification speed of facial expressions. The pattern of results that would support a "discrete emotions perspective" would be expected to reveal significantly increased activity in the medial frontalis (eyebrow raiser) and corrugator supercilii (frown) muscles associated with fear, and significantly decreased reaction times (RTs) to "only" fear faces in the fear odor condition. Conversely, a pattern of results characterized by only a significantly increased corrugator supercilii activity together with decreased RTs for fear, disgust, and anger faces in the fear odor condition would support an interpretation in line with a general negative evaluative state perspective. The data support the discrete emotion account for facial affect perception primed with fear odor. This study provides a first demonstration of perception of discrete negative facial expressions using olfactory priming

Corrigendum: Fear odor facilitates the detection of fear expressions over other negative expressions [Chem. Senses (2018)] DOI: 10.1093/chemse/bjy029

This is a correction notice for article bjy029 (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/chemse/bjy029), published on 22 May 2018. Due to an error, the incorrect images were used for figures 2 and 3. These figures have now been corrected in the published article

Situating desire: Situational cues affect desire for food through eating simulations

How do situations influence food desire? Although eating typically occurs in rich background situations, research on food desire often focuses on the properties of foods and consumers, rather than on the situations in which eating takes place. Here, we take a grounded cognition perspective and suggest that a situation that is congruent with consuming a food increases simulations of eating it, which, in turn, affect desire, and the expected and actual liking of the food. We tested this idea in four pre-registered experiments (N = 524). Participants processed an image of a food presented in a congruent situation, an incongruent situation, or no background situation. Compared to the incongruent situation, the congruent situation increased expected liking of the food and desire, and this was partially or fully mediated by eating simulations. The congruent situation also increased salivation, a physiological indicator of preparing to eat. However, there was only weak and indirect evidence for congruence effects on actual liking of the food when tasted. These findings show that situational cues can affect desire for food through eating simulations. Thus, background situations play an important but understudied role in human food desires. We address implications for research using food images, and for applications to promote healthy and sustainable eating behaviour

Situating desire: situational cues affect desire for food through eating simulations

How do situations influence food desire? Although eating typically occurs in rich background situations, research on food desire often focuses on the properties of foods and consumers, rather than on the situations in which eating takes place. Here, we take a grounded cognition perspective and suggest that a situation that is congruent with consuming a food increases simulations of eating it, which, in turn, affect desire, and the expected and actual liking of the food. We tested this idea in four pre-registered experiments (N = 524). Participants processed an image of a food presented in a congruent situation, an incongruent situation, or no background situation. Compared to the incongruent situation, the congruent situation increased expected liking of the food and desire, and this was partially or fully mediated by eating simulations. The congruent situation also increased salivation, a physiological indicator of preparing to eat. However, there was only weak and indirect evidence for congruence effects on actual liking of the food when tasted. These findings show that situational cues can affect desire for food through eating simulations. Thus, background situations play an important but understudied role in human food desires. We address implications for research using food images, and for applications to promote healthy and sustainable eating behaviour

Disgust sensitivity relates to affective responses to – but not ability to detect – olfactory cues to pathogens

Hundreds of studies have assessed variation in the degree to which people experience disgust toward substances associated with pathogens, but little is known about the mechanistic sources of this variation. The current investigation uses olfactory perception and threshold methods to test whether it is apparent at the cue-detection level, at the cue-interpretation level, or both. It further tests whether relations between disgust sensitivity and olfactory perception are specific to odors associated with pathogens. Two studies (N's = 119 and 160) of individuals sampled from a Dutch university each revealed that pathogen disgust sensitivity relates to valence perceptions of odors found in pathogen sources, but not to valence perceptions of odors not associated with pathogens, nor to intensity perceptions of odors of either type. Study 2, which also assessed olfactory thresholds via a three-alternative forced-choice staircase method, did not reveal a relation between pathogen disgust sensitivity and the ability to detect an odor associated with pathogens, nor an odor not associated with pathogens. In total, results are consistent with the idea that pathogen disgust sensitivity relates to how olfactory pathogen cues are interpreted after detection, but not necessarily to the ability to detect such cues